Does Samsung Have A Retro Powerhouse Camera Up Its Sleeve?

The Fujifilm X100 doesn’t just perform like a champ, it looks wonderfully analogue as well. Samsung isn’t going to let Fujifilm eat all the retro cake — they’re planning a faux-vintage digital of their own, according to a new rumour.

Photog blog 36exp posted about an R1 camera by Samsung — a camera that doesn’t exist — which was then inexplicably deleted. Does it know something we don’t? Camera gossip site Mirrorless rumours got a copy before it was taken down:

Last night I attended a feedback session run by a research company on behalf of a major camera company. They were looking for ‘advanced camera users’ to give feedback on a new camera design.

They showed what looked like a very well progressed mock up and spec of a camera, which was about the size of a Canon G12 (Click here ot see that cam), or mirrorless camera, but had styling very similar to the Fuji X100 (Click here ot see that cam).

The spec of the camera that we were asked to give feedback on was given as:

They didn’t reveal it as Samsung initially, but the discussion got onto which brands we trusted and everyone mentioned Nikon, Canon, Leica etc as brands with heritage that they would trust if buying into what seemed to be a premium camera. When someone mentioned that they would be less likely to buy it if it was from Samsung a guy appeared (who been observing the session from behind one way glass) and announced that it was a Samsung camera, and asked our thoughts on this….

Couldn’t get any pictures or bring anything out unfortunately. It may be called the Retro R1 or similar as the mock up had Retro etched on it, but tape over the rest of the name.

I really liked it, seemed to have SLR spec in a smaller body, hopefully it comes to fruition.

This sounds great to us — stellar specs in a tiny, beautifully antiquey shell, with the interchangeable lenses we’ve adored so much lately. I hope the trend takes off, so long as innards aren’t given priority over image quality. [PetaPixel]